


Five Times Molly Hooper Didn't Betray Sherlock (and one time she did)

by CadetDru



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 5+1 Things, Betrayal, Gen, Honesty, Lies, Post Reichenbach, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CadetDru/pseuds/CadetDru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Times Molly Hooper Didn't Betray Sherlock (and one time she did)<br/>or<br/>"I Believe in Sherlock"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mycroft Holmes

Molly was doing a post-mortem on Richard Brook or James Moriarty or whatever name belonged to this cruel man. She took no joy from his dead body before her. It was just work. She wasn't glad he was dead-- self-inflicted, gunshot wound, blood and brains a mess but the rest of the body untouched. She was just glad he was gone, never to hurt anyone else. Never to hurt her friends, or her, or anyone at all. 

He had used her to get to Sherlock, like he had used so many others, John Watson not the least among them. When it came to the final problem, the final duel, the cruel man had overlooked her. That had been the saving of Sherlock. Now Molly was left behind, to tie up the loose ends. 

Mycroft Holmes walked in. She was used to a Holmes appearing unannounced. She didn't bother to greet him; he wouldn't greet her back. 

"I believe in Sherlock," she said, when the silence had gone on too long. She had to say something. A true statement was as good as anything else. 

"Believed," Mycroft corrected her.

She glanced up at him with her startled eyes, too frightened to even cry. "It was never a trick. He saw too much." 

"He had no special affection for you," Mycroft said. It was true. He was like his brother in that, casually dishing out simple truths that cut to the core. 

"You're like him," she said. "Sherlock would do that, would hurt people too casually with what he had seen. It couldn't be a trick, being that thoughtlessly cruel." She looked up at Mycroft, to see if that had hit him in some gap in his mental armor. 

He looked a little sad, but no different than normal. There had been no sniper for Mycroft either, she realized. Was it so he would suffer, be the silent witness to the whole ordeal? Was it because Sherlock resented him so, as children will resent their parents? On the cold table between them was the man who hadn't deemed either of them worthy of snipers for whatever reason. Mycroft was the audience; Molly was just a walk-on character.

"What is his name?" Mycroft asked.

"I don't know," Molly said, helplessly and truthfully. She didn't need to lie to Mycroft, he had to know, but she had to practice not saying anything to anyone. 

"Is it my brother? Am I here to identify him?" Mycroft said, a smile ghosting across his lips.

"That." Molly took a deep breath. "That's up for you to say, Mr. Holmes." She didn't keep her voice from trembling completely, but no one could in that situation. Especially if it had been Sherlock before her. 

Tears fell and she turned her head so they wouldn't fall on the body of the cruel man. "He jumped," she said, and that was true. "I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Holmes." That was true as well.

Mycroft let another smile ghost over his face. "Thank you, Miss Hooper."


	2. Mrs. Hudson

Molly had come to the flat, just to look at things. Collect body parts Sherlock had taken away. Tidy things up, hold Mrs. Hudson up. She was a lovesick mourner with no real agenda, just drifting through life. 

It wasn't untrue. She would never see Sherlock again. She'd stopped crying. She didn't feel sad. She felt numb and dull and grey. 

She put on gloves and started sorting through the various experiments in progress. She tried not to gag, not to cry. She suppressed every bodily reaction to the situation. 

"John won't come back any more," Mrs. Hudson said. "He misses Sherlock soo."

"They meant a lot to one another."

"Sherlock needed him, but it's not always enough, is it, dear?"

"No," Molly said.

"Would you like some tea?"

"Yes," Molly lied. 

"I did believe in Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson said over tea. "Such a shame."

"It always is," Molly heard herself saying. "Whenever it ends." He's alive, she didn't say. He saved you by faking his death. He's finally become a good man, a man worth all of our time, and we will never see him again. 

"Do you think...?" Mrs. Hudson started.

Molly let the half-finished sentence hang. It wasn't safe. There was too much of a trap there. 

"John's taken it so hard," Mrs. Hudson said. "Do you think he and Sherlock, that they..."

Molly smiled a little, laughed a little more. "I never can tell that sort of thing," she said, and it was the first completely true thing she'd said since coming to the Baker Street flat.


	3. DI Greg Lestrade

They were out for lunch, Molly and DI Lestrade. Greg, he wanted her to call him. He and his wife were on the outs again. He was trying to explain himself, his role in Sherlock's suicide. Molly was still mourning Sherlock. She didn't have enough black to wear everyday, so she let it show in her face. 

The greatest lie was the truth. She was getting better and better at that. It was a skill that would serve her well. It was something John Watson did so easily; bad liar, good partial-truth-teller. 

"I believed in Sherlock," Greg said, and the past tense came so easily to him. He had seen too much. Brought the great man down, just when he was becoming a good man. 

"We all did," Molly said. 

"He shouldn't have killed himself."

"Death can... it can bring a peace," Molly said. "And a suicide can bring even more."

Lestrade-- Greg? No, that wasn't going to happen now -- stared at her. "Suicide is... it's never... he shouldn't have done it."

"He was disgraced. Everything in his world-- he cared so much about being taken seriously, about being the clever one. And the...the cruel man unleashed on him... he had no choice."

"'The cruel man' being Moriarty?"

"Yes, Richard Brook."

"Molly..." Lestrade was pleading with her now. He knew what he had done, what Donovan and Anderson had done. They'd killed Sherlock just as surely as Molly had. 

"Greg," she said flatly. 

"You blame me."

"You _can_ deduce things," she said, not holding back the little twitches that pulled at her features into an angry scowl.

"Molly," he said again. "Did you take any time off after the funeral?"

"You don't get time off just for someone who didn't love you back." 

Greg looked at her with so much pity it choked her.

"How's your wife," she asked, her eyes bright with a justified and restrained anger.


	4. Sally Donovan

It was Molly's round at their girl's night out. She knew Sally felt sorry for her. It was a mutual feeling.

Sally had drank just enough to start really talking. "I..." she started, and didn't finish. She stared at her pint instead of looking at Molly. 

"I believed in Sherlock," Molly said. "He could find out the strangest things, just by looking at you."

"That doesn't mean he wasn't a criminal," Sally said. She still wouldn't meet Molly's eyes. 

"I believe in Sherlock now," Molly challenged her.

"Lestrade told me that," Sally said, tilting her head. "You scared him, you know."

"Nothing you can say will change what I think. A good man was driven to his death," she said. She let the challenge drop away, and the tears well up. 

"He wasn't a good man," Sally said softly. 

"He was becoming one."

"He was a freak."

"He was... I loved him, you know."

"I know," Sally said, and that was as close to any kind of apology Molly was ever going to get. "I tried to warn John," Sally continued. "I never thought I'd have to warn you. You weren't... you never needed Sherlock, the way John did. You and I have that in common; we don't need people that way."

"Sherlock... he just filled a room when he was in it."

"That's not a good thing."

"How could it not be?"

"He sucked the life out of everyone he came into contact with. He just... he did all of these unbelievable things. No one alive could do that. No one ever could."

"Sherlock could."

"If he was clever as that, why did he kill himself?"

"You had to know how clever he was. Someone had to be there to tell him."

"Someone being John. Freak used him."

"Don't speak ill of the dead," Molly said dully.


	5. John Watson

Molly was avoiding John. He was avoiding her too. The first time John met Sherlock was at St. Bart's. Molly hadn't even asked John his name then, she was so focused on Sherlock. He was too. 

They were mirroring one another. But Molly had a better reason for it, or a worse one. John was mourning his friend. Molly was wondering if her lie would be caught. Guilt for them both, which worked out nicely to cover for Molly. 

John was working at St. Bart's now. He was using his cane again. 

He came down to Molly. Clearly just to talk. "He was my best friend," he said.

Molly didn't say "I know." Instead, she said, "The cruel man..."

"Sherlock was never!" John burst out. "Sorry."

"Not him. Moriarty. I think of him as the cruel man," Molly said, putting voice to some of her private thoughts. "He didn't... I wasn't." She couldn't explain to John, she realized with a sigh. She composed herself, and started over. "He destroyed Sherlock. As well as anyone could. He..."

John Watson, her friend, the man she had completely overlooked when they first met, stared at her with the eyes of someone who had seen too much. "He burned the heart out of him," John said with a strange look. 

Molly cast her eyes down. "I believe in Sherlock, John. I always will."

"That's what I came here to tell you."

"Do you want to get lunch?" she said.

"Compare notes and all. Therapist phone numbers."

"Something like that," she agreed. 

John closed his eyes.

"How's your leg?" Molly asked.

"It's fine."

"You look like you're in pain."

"I am."

"Your shoulder, then?"

"It's all psychosomatic. I miss..." The war. Sherlock. Danger.

She could put him into danger so easily. Tell him about Moriarty's actual suicide, and Sherlock's faked one. 

Or did Moriarty really kill himself? Sherlock couldn't have...could he have?

"Molly," John was saying. 

"Sorry. I was just...thinking of him. I know he... he's gone now." True, true, true. "I still believe in him."


	6. Sherlock Holmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...and one time she did.

The third anniversary, something snapped in Molly. Three years ago, on this day, she had set up the scene with him, prevented John from examining him. 

She was working. A normal day. She wore black. John was somewhere nearby, doing the same. He'd just lost another person-- his latest girlfriend, Mary, had died suddenly. A heroin overdose. John seemed drawn to these types. He wanted to do good, wanted to rescue the damsel in distress.

Molly was doing Mary's autopsy, pitying John as she did it. "Sherlock is alive," she heard herself telling the dead woman on the table before her. "John didn't need to lose two people like this. You're just like Sherlock, to him. Just like his sister. But Harriet is alive. And Sherlock is alive too."

"Sherlock is alive," she said to herself in line for lunch.

She went looking for John, to tell him. Not the results of Mary's autopsy, nothing unexpected there. She needed to tell him Sherlock was alive, just as much as he needed to hear it. 

Mycroft found her first.

She drew in her breath, and straightened her back. The cruel man hadn't thought her worth the effort of a sniper, but Mycroft undoubtedly would if she betrayed his brother.

"Sherlock is alive."

He didn't respond. 

She said it again: "Sherlock is alive."

Mycroft's lips tightened into a line. A woman, texting away, appeared behind him.

"Sherlock is alive," Molly told the woman who didn't look up.

"Sherlock is dead," Mycroft corrected her.

"Sherlock is alive and I helped him fool the world. Sherlock is alive and I have to tell John. Sherlock is alive and... and I believe in Sherlock."

"If he is alive, he needs your help still in fooling the world," Mycroft said. Placating the fool before him who would shout her lies to the world. 

"Sherlock is alive and I'm going to tell John."

The woman looked up at her then. "Sir?" she said. 

"No."

Back to texting. "Sherlock is dead," the woman said softly. 

"Sherlock is alive." A terrible thought struck her. "Isn't he?"

"Yes," said the man himself. Three strides, and he was holding her shoulders. So much anger blazed in his pale eyes. She'd nearly forgotten what they looked like. It had been so long since he'd asked her for help, on that terrible day. "I asked you not to tell anyone, Molly."

"I had to-- have to-- tell John. He needs to know."

"I'll tell him."

"I lied to so many people for so long and it hurt them, and it hurt me, and I..." And the tears started. "And I'd do it all again," she said, soft as a heartbeat. 

Sherlock kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes and waited. Listened to the three sets of footsteps walk away.


End file.
